Pain and Wastings

They shuffle down Eastside Hastings as thou with feet’s of clay

A city tour bus drives North on Main street with wide-eyed tour’s 

They take pictures to remind them what Hell on earth maybe

Women look like witches in Polanski’s movie version of Macbeth

Men look like starvied vampires

Thay hide in the shodows of the Carnegie Libray 

Some light up thier crack pipes 

There drugs bring them to Heaven

But they only wake up in the East side of Hell

On beds made out of cardboard curled up in dirty street blankets

They sleep, shit, piss, fuck in the back alleys of the downtown Eastside

Madding creams of Pain and Waste wake me 

I hate them but pray for them in one breath

As I look out thro my dirty hotel room window

Several are still out there under dark hanged skies

Lighting up their pipes

As a little piece of their souls burn into the night

I walk to work through their

Pain and Waste

In steel toe boots at 5am

Down Hastings and hold my cigarette breath

As I pass across a back alley

Smells like toilet

A small village live underneath the canopy of the Bottle Exchange

Reminding me of society’s unpersons

All ready in line with forgotten shopping carts

Full of pop cans, beer and wine bottles

They guard their garbage bin findings

Like wolf”s fresh kill

I come back from Granville st.

After cleaning up the middle class midnight happiness

I feel like an unperson myself

Walk through an army of people who took a shower today

The village has now turned into a junkie’s flea market

I stop at one spot as a thin-skulled face girl with long blond hair

Crouching over her stuff

Like an alley cat over a dead rat

She looks up at me with jaded green eyes

I see her lost beauty and know now

Why they call Main and Hastings

Pain and Wastings.

This poem was publish in the

MEGAPHONE

Vancouver’s Street Paper

Issue 62/ September 17th 2010

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